Tag: Science fiction

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Moderately hard winds moaned and grumbled through the neighborhood last night. Toward eleven, I was in the kitchen when I heard a noise. It sounded like the heater could be on but it was coming from the wrong direction, or that a faucet was running, but again, no faucets where the sound seemed to be. I walked around to localize the sound only to realize, it’s a hard rain drumming on the roof outside the vaulted ceiling in the great room. It’s so rare that we have heavy rain, I didn’t recognize its sound.

Wind and rain went on throughout the night. Nice to have rain but we need snow. I can’t believe that we’re at the end of 2022 and we still don’t have weather control. The mind reels with unintended consequences which we might be dealing with now if we did have it. Weather control was always one of my favorite science fiction ideas as a child, along with space travel, teleportation, exploring other planets, and ‘time travel’. We have none of that yet. Even flying cars have evaded us. I think it’s because extraterrestrials got in among us and have sabotaged our efforts because they don’t want us advancing, but that’s just me.

Doesn’t feel like winter outside, probably because there’s no snow and ice, not even any on the surrounding mountains. It’s all sunshine and blue sky today. The temperature is 48 F and the grass is as green as late spring. Our high temperature will be just three degrees higher, but still, this is December’s end in the northern lats. Where is the cold stuff of last week? To be fair, this is around our average high. Lows usually touch the lower thirties, though. We wouldn’t mind some of the cyclone bomb snow obliterating a lot of the U.S., although cyclone bomb sounds like a bath thing. If we had that weather control, maybe we could protect others and save ourselves from drought. Instead, we’re dithering with social media.

The sun’s influence arrived with a full blaze at 7:39, just two hours ago. Sun fall will begin about seven hours later from now, if I’m doing the math right, which is very iffy. I haven’t had any coffee.

Hearing that rain last night and thinking about how hard it was falling brought out a Dylan tune called “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. The song came out in 1963 but I didn’t get familiar with it until after “Tangled Up in Blue” came out in 1975. Dylan wasn’t played much on the AM radio which I listened to in the late sixties and early seventies. It wasn’t until Tangled came out and I was stationed in the Philippines that I went searching for more Dylan and discovered his earlier stuff. I was twenty then, and became engrossed with his lyrics and style, so I bought a few album, listening to them as I painted and drew when I was off duty and not partying or exercising. I deem “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” today’s theme music. Mentioning that, the state up north and east of us is worried about this rain, because it’s going to melt the snow, opening a can of problems with flooding.

It’s Tuesday, December 27, 2022. Go have yourself a ball. I’m going to have coffee. Here’s Dylan’s somber song. Cheers

0

The Shimmering

When the shimmering began, he took no notice. Half an ear heard of it, a quarter of his brain gave it a few seconds of attention, but that was mostly because he was a dirty old man. He was a dirty old man, couldn’t help himself, though he tried to be woke or whatever the right expression was, so the three young women caught his attention.

They were right beside him, so young, healthy, and energetic, drinking some kind of holiday coffee drink loaded with whip cream and sipped up with straws. He could even smell whatever perfume of shampoo or lotion they wore. Their behavior kindled a universe of remembered thoughts about what being young meant. One, the brunette, a tall person with wide dark eyes, maybe endowed with some Korean heritage, gasped and said more loudly than anything said previously, “Marcus has the shimmering.”

Voices dropping, heads moving toward a center point, the conversation’s tone was a serious counterpart to their previous merriment. Such behavior just sucked him in.

“He does?” said one blonde. As she continued with rising concern, “When,” and “Who told you,” the other blonde said, “Oh my God, when did he get it?”

Their voices dropped lower. Coffee house adult contemporary rock and mild tinnitus kept him from hearing though he pushed his mind to deeper levels of concentration. Nothing came of it.

They left five minutes later, texting on phones, drinks in hand, moving in a line to the exit and out. The shimmering was such an unusual expression, hours later, at home while watching The Kominsky Method again and eating a piece of Marie Callender apple pie which he’d baked, he remembered it and asked his dog if she’d ever heard of it. Although the dog’s intelligent face perked up, she said nothing.

“Fine help you are,” he said, the expression the two shared often, especially when he thought he heard someone creeping around outside at night. The shimmering still gnawed at him like an earworm which wouldn’t let go, so he turned to his ancient laptop and brought up Google. He hated Google almost as much as Twitter and Facebook, but Google unfortunately delivered the best results.

The shimmering, he typed in, figuring that it was probably using a traditional spelling, chuckling to himself at his droll wit. The computer screen went black as soon as he pressed enter.

“What the — .” He stared at the screen. What now? Damn technology. Stupid computer. He pressed enter a few times, hoping that would stir the screen back to life, and the did alt-ctrl-delete. Ah, yes, the old three-fingered salute. Remember the BSOD, he told himself, and laughed.

Grimacing, he acknowledged, he probably needed to do a hard reboot and pray to the tech gods that the stupid machine worked. Well, it was old. He couldn’t remember when he’d bought it. Seemed like it’d been at least ten years. Could that be right?

The screen lit up as he reached for the power button. It was kind of lavender-ish and blue, but also white and almost bright as looking at the full sun on a clear day. Pulling back with a hard wince, he closed his eyes, said, “Damn,” loudly, and leaned back.

Shelby said beside him, “That is bright.”

Eyebrows jumping, he peered at the black and white dog. Did she speak or was he imagining that? “What?” he finally asked.

The dog turned her brown and amber eyes on him. “I said that it’s bright.”

He gawked at her.

“I mean the screen,” Shelby said. “At least it’s bright to me.” The dog pointed her nose at the screen. “Hey, there are words.”

“You can read?” he asked. “You can talk and you read?”

“Look,” the dog answered, backing away. “Your skin.”

“What?” He looked down in almost the same second. A gasp rode out of him. His hands were shimmering like white sequins under hot spotlights.

Then a voice from the computer said, “You have been given the shimmering.”

“What?” he replied, because his neurons had abandoned their posts and nothing made sense to him. He might even be having a stroke. He’d always feared having a stroke.

The computer said, “Initiation beginning.” The light flowed out of the screen and embraced him.

An unexpected life was about to begin.

0

Letting Go

Arising early in accordance with planning, as tested a few times during the previous months, I walked up through the trees and brush. The false dawn was giving new light to see. I kept climbing until I reached a cleft below the hilltop. I’d scouted this location a dozen times. It still seemed like the best.

There was nothing auspicious about this day. I’d said my secret good-byes and did all that I could to prepare. It really didn’t seem like enough. There would probably never be enough. I was preparing to break so many laws. The life I’d known would be gone – if I did this. But wasn’t that why I was here?

Yes, I told myself. Yes, that’s why I was here. Carefully, I unpacked and set up.

I settled into a comfortable position to wait. Dawn’s warm arrival awoke me an hour later. 6:59, my watch told me. I’d overslept by fifteen minutes. Not a big deal. The slaves had not arrived.

The wind stayed calm as hoped. Sunshine’s heat soon had sweat bubbling out of me. It could also be nerves. I wiped my palms several times. They kept becoming wet. Gnats and flies began finding me. Large black and yellow bees buzzed my scalp.

Punctual, the slaves arrived at eight, announcing their entrance with soft chanting. They are such simple, happy people. That is the curse, though, isn’t it? I’m sure it is. Is it my right to make them otherwise?

They might not become otherwise. They could stay happy and simple. I didn’t believe that. Everyone freed of the curse becomes angry when they learn what’s been going on. How they’d be used. But, but, don’t they, didn’t they deserve to experience the full range of being human, even if it does piss them off? Others disagree, but I think, yes it does. Yes. Look at who I was and what I’d become. I would not have been up on a hill with a rifle a year ago. I’m here now to free others as I’d been freed.

All the slaves I’d seen before were present, giving no worries. I counted them every day as they went to the different fields and orchards. The races began by working together in small knots, just as they’d arrived, but then males and females separated, moving on to greet people in other groups. Soon couples and quartets were developed, laughing, whispering, joking, and complaining as they picked. Snatches of their talking poked at me as I stayed in wait. Finally, moved by the spirit to do the thing I’d planned, I repositioned myself and raised my rifle.

I remained hesitant. Worry’s last vestiges clung to me like cobwebs. But I’d shot others first, testing the magic bullets and the vaccine loaded in them. The slaves would suffer pain for a few minutes, but then they would be released. I was doing the right thing.

No, I wasn’t doing anything, yet.

I wanted to shoot as many as possible, of course. I counted on being accurate and silent. I’d practiced, practiced, practiced, always in furtive secrecy, protected by The Net. Forty-eight slaves were in the field. I hoped to shoot them all. I didn’t have confidence that was possible, but I would try.

The couple furthest from me, off by themselves in the northeastern corner, were targeted. Four hundred forty-two yards away, I found them in my scope, shifting my rifle with their movements until center mass was presented. Hesitation reigned for another fist of seconds, then two. Finally, almost as though my finger tired of waiting for me, it slipped onto the trigger and moved. The deed began.

The suppressor kept my work unnoticed for a bit. I worked from the northeast across the field, taking the farthest people down before moving back in the opposite direction, targeting closer slaves. Some noticed the others falling but couldn’t, wouldn’t, comprehend why. Their thinking was too stunted.

No, it was not the slaves who worried me.

Knowing they’d soon be on me, I quickened my firing. Fifteen were shot. Nineteen. Twenty-four.

A drone showed up on the horizon and began hovering.

Keeping to cover, I fired faster. Twenty-five, -six, -seven. The first woke slaves were standing, falling over again, woozy as the bullet’s magic worked and released them from their spells. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.

The drone sped my way. I stood and raised a shoulder launcher into place. Its targeting system found the drone. Going green, the targeting system said, ‘beep’, and fired with a snug click. A yellow fireball took the drone’s place. Black smoke climbing, pieces showered down.

Taking a knee, I picked up the other rifle and resumed shooting slaves. Center mass was desired but by now, I was hastening to get whatever I could, telling myself, “Anything but a head shot, anything but a head shot.”

Lawnmower buzzing from above and behind told me of another drone’s arrival. Dropping one weapon, I went for the shoulder launcher.

Fumble.

The shoulder launcher slipped from my slick fingers. I lunged for it, trying to grab it and pull it in, bouncing the launcher into the air. Realizing it would go over the hillside, I stretched further.

Too much.

Flailing for a branch, I teetered on the edge of balance.

The drone’s sound changed.

Stopped, it was targeting me.

Feeling defenseless, I sucked in air and announced with suppressed desperation, “Here we go.”

I leaped over the ridge into the thickets below. Crashing through them, balance was lost. Branches raked my cheeks and stabbed at my eyes. My left ankle flared with sharp pain.

A small missile explosion marked my previous space with a deafening sound. Rocks and clods of dirt flew by. Twisting, fighting gravity, trying to protect myself, I fell and tumbled, rolled and bounced, grunting and grabbing as I went, finally snagging a branch with one hand. As momentum jerked to a stop, I hung on, sweating and gasping like a sprinter finishing their run, and looked down.

My heart quailed.

A thirty-foot drop was below me. Its spiked, rocky bottom offered bloody promises. If I’d gone over there….

Left of it was a man. Large, black, a former slave, one of the first who I’d shot. He’d gotten here so fast.

He stared at me. The shoulder launcher was in his hands.

The drone swept around to finish me off. “Shoot it,” I shouted, hoping he understood. Swinging, feet fighting with the earth as it fell away, I tried climbing the branch like a rope. Its smaller branches tore into my hands and interfered with my grip. I barely hung on.

Heat blasted out of the sky above me. The former slave had figured it out. He’d saved me.

I laughed for half a second at life’s absurdity. I would not be able to climb back up.

“Let go,” someone shouted from below. “We’ll catch you. Let go.”

Several were shouting that. I couldn’t see them. I had to trust them.

That’s what life is about, isn’t it, I rhetorically said to myself in an absurdly placid moment. Letting go.

Do it, I urged as they shouted from below. Do it, do it. One. Two.

Eyes closing, I let go.

4

Contact 2

Continued from Contact

Britt (not his real name) had never planned to be Human. Nor had he expected to be on Earth. On his eighth life, he’d been cruising toward his ninth. Omnipotence would be his, was almost within reach of his yearning fingers but then –

Well, then.

Then.

He’d secured every thought and emotion – and there was a huge spectrum of these – around ‘then’ under a mountain, sealed it in a mental tunnel, blocked its access. Because –

Well. Then.

Once he’d learned of his fate, he researched what he could about the planet and human civilizations. He learned: his people hadn’t visited in over two thousand Terran years, thirty-five hundreds of their own years. Still, some items were left behind. He acquired maps and entry codes, found and fixed the vehicle pushing through the processes of activating and testing the systems and flying the thing. Three years, he’d taken, manufacturing new parts, testing everything, adjusting to his body and their limited senses, cursing the optimists who’d informed him that, although they’d never been Human, being Human on Earth was apparently much like it was enduring in your seventh life.

Ha. They were wrong.

Being Human was worse.

© 2022 Michael Seidel

2

The First Day

First day of school. She’d had to buy her son a new Backhand. He wore it proudly, turning to see it again and again. Fiddling with its controls. Mastering it.

A Backhand. On her son. Her five year old. She’d not gotten a Backhand until she was twenty-three years old. But they hadn’t been affordable to her until she was twenty-two. By then they’d been around for five years, replacing phones, watches, laptops, and everything else. Just a device on the back of your hand, doing all those things, feeding off your body’s energy. She still discovered it as amazing and creepy.

She wasn’t ready to surrender her little boy to the pearly halls of education. He seemed so small and fragile. This was the pain of being a mother. Her mom told her she would experience it. She knew she would, too. She’d been a virtual mother for two years, training for the vocation.

“Are you nervous, Jayed?”

Jayed turned his liquid brown orbs at her with a bright smile. “I’m not nervous. Why would I be?”

Not surprising. He’d gone to in-person daycare and online classes since he was three. They grow up so fast.

Jayed said “They’re going to start teaching us emoticons today. I already know most of them.”

Kary’s mother came in as Jayed said that. She, of course, couldn’t stop a head shake. Habit and personality compelled it. “Emoticons. I remember when we learned cursive writing. I was older than him. It was phased out two years after my class. Oh, how things change.”

She squatted down before Jayed. “Look at my little scholar.”

Jayed was dressed in his best red shirt with black shorts and purple rubber sandals. Corporate sponsors on his front and back. The usual suspects. Energy companies. Baseball and football teams. Restaurants and banks. They all had part of her baby already. But this was good. Without corporate sponsors, they wouldn’t be able to afford public school. The city’s NFL team, the Mexico City Aztecs, had stepped forward in a big way. Paid for all his vaccination, his share of the teacher, and his meals.

The teleporter chimed. “Time to go,” Jayed said, spinning and striding toward the teleporter like a miniature man. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be okay.”

She rushed to him, along with her mother. Both bent, forcing him to turn back to them, lavishing the youth with hugs and slobbering, noisy kisses as they said, “You be good. Treat others with respect.” He endured and accepted, then smiled. “You shouldn’t be so emotional. I’m just going off to school. I’ll be back tonight.”

Then he stepped back into the teleporter. Raised the Backhand to the keypad. Synced. And was gone.

0

Floofto

Floofto (floofinition) – Small, artificial planet that animals use as an intermediary visiting location while coming and going from Earth. Floofologists theorize that Floofto is cloaked and maintains an orbit around the Earth and Moon, completing one revolution every twenty hours.

In use: “With an equatorial circumference of almost seven thousand miles, Floofto would normally exert some influence on other bodies, were it not for the Institute of Floofnology and their inventions. One invention keeps Floofto’s mass and gravity from affecting anything, floofnology that humans would love to acquire.”

2

FTF (Faster Than Floof)

FTF (Faster Than Floof) (floofinition) – The hypothesis that only non-humans can travel at speeds faster than the speed of light. The special theory of floofactivity implies that only quantum animals (such as housepets like cats and dogs) can reach such speeds, doing so almost instantaneously, allowing them to apparently simultaneously occupy more than one place.

In use: “Anyone with pets know that many are capable of FTF; just open a can and watch them arrive.”

3

Amber’s Gift

After exiting the Camaro, silence governed the quartet as they stretched, sniffed, and glanced. Laurel’s father had given the car to her as a high school graduation gift. Camaros had only been out for like, two years, and the little car looked sporty and fresh against the grayish morning.

The town had just completed a face lift of the old plaza. Clean and white cement walks outlined fresh carpets of new, cut grass. Busy, the plaza remained quiet with the stalwart momentum of citizens engaging daily routines. As far as air and sky went, powdery grays above snickered about a chance of drizzle while a streak of sunshine under a blue patch insisted that a sunny day could be possible.

Chatter about what to do ensued. Where should they start? Should they eat first? Toast and bacon smells surfing the fall breeze said, “Come, eat. Follow me.”

Gavin, looking right and stamping his feet against the feeling that they were going numb, saw a small sign on a stack beside a rhodie drooping with night’s damp. Aloud, he read, “Amber’s gift.” Such words created a mental puzzle. Gazing up the steps toward the dank chilliness where they went, his appetite grew.

Back to his friends, he said, “I want to eat first, but pre-first, I’m going to go see what Amber’s Gift is. It’s just take a minute.”

“Pre-first?” Shallie laughed.

“Amber’s gift.” Keri’s face beetled into a frown. “Okay, but don’t be long. I’m hungry. I want to go eat, and I need coffee.” She groaned. “God, do I need coffee. Do I smell coffee?” She lifted her nose into the air. “I do. That’s coffee. Where is that? Does anyone else smell coffee?”

As the others bantered with her about coffee, Gavin said, “I’ll be right back.” He went up the shallow steps fast, two at a time. Pockmarked by time and rain, the cement flight were probably decades old, but the sign, red hand-painted letters on cardboard on a wooden blonde stake, looked new. With that background set, he didn’t expect much. The walk would probably be a minute venture. He wanted to pack everything that he could into every minute. This would be his last weekend away. His draft number had been drawn and he was reporting to the recruiting station the next Monday. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam after basic. Crossing his fingers, he repeated to himself, “Hopefully.”

Shielded by giant firs, pines, sycamores, and oaks, the steps went up higher than Gavin expected. He went fast because he didn’t want to keep the others waiting. As he thought that he’d taken too much time and energy and his stomach rumbled with a request to be fed, he spotted a glow. It seemed like a faintly illuminated cloud of golden pollen dust. Past the glow, the park’s woods seemed darker and wetter than he’d think possible at nine plus in the morning. Quieter, too. Only sounds of his breathing and heart-beat reached him.

The glow seemed like it was concentrated in a dome. He didn’t see anything like a placard to explain this or confirmation that he’d reached Amber’s Gift. Pivoting to turn and leave, he saw something on the ground in the cloud’s middle. That looked like a bronze disc. It was that, he saw in another step, but also a polished, faceted piece of amber that was as large as his head. Eyes widening, he walked up to it and squatted, dropping his fingers to its surface with a gentle stroke. He expected it to be hard and cold, but soft warmth greeted his fingers. Smiling he stroked it again, counting, two, three, four, five.

That was enough, he thought, then was amused that he’d quantified and counted his strokes. Leaping up, he dashed back down the steps. The girls were waiting for him at the bottom beside Laurel’s Prius. The red car looked almost like a space ship.

“About time,” Laurel said as Keri said, “Here comes Christmas.”

“Where have you been?” Shallie asked, arms crossed. “We were about to give you up as dead.”

As he went to answer, Gavin’s arms caught his attention. His fake leather jacket was changing. After gaping at that, he gawked at his friends. Ridiculously wide bell bottoms accented their blue jean hip-huggers, but all that was changing into tight black and blue bottoms that outlined their thighs, knees, and calves. He was certain that it wasn’t what they’d been wearing before.

“Where were you?” Laurel demanded.

“I was.” Beginning to point, Gavin looked for the Amber’s Gift sign. A mossy look of confused thinking hung on his face. “Where’s the sign?

“What sign?” Shallie asked.

The girls laughed. Laurel said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Gavin.”

Keri gestured him forward. “Come on, dude. You need coffee.”

“Some coffee would be groovy,” Gavin replied, nodding.

“Groovy?” Laurel laughed. “What decade are you in?”

Remembering something for a moment, Gavin chuckled. “I don’t know.” As he and his friends went along the plaza’s old, worn walks, sunshine split the gray clouds and peeled them away from the day.

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑